{"id":420756,"date":"2026-08-01T12:20:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/420756\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T12:20:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:20:33","slug":"california-ski-season-gets-a-start-date-mammoth-mountain-announces-its-opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/420756\/","title":{"rendered":"California Ski Season Gets a Start Date: Mammoth Mountain Announces Its Opening Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinertia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1200x695-3-23.png\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-328122\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-328122\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1200x695-3-23-670x388.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"670\" height=\"388\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-328122\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Mammoth Mountain<\/p>\n<p>        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/favicon-surf.png\" alt=\"The Inertia\" width=\"30\" height=\"30\" class=\"lazyload\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Last winter was all kinds of backwards out West. It didn\u2019t kick off with a bang. Multiple resorts limped their way through the holidays and into 2026 without significant snowfall. Sure, there was coverage, but it wasn\u2019t anything to write home about from California to Colorado and beyond. Then March came, and so did an offensive heat wave that shut down a lot\u00a0of ski areas long before Easter. Next up, Mother Nature pulled a rope a dope and delivered a strong push into spring, enabling some places (not many) to extend seasons. Something that didn\u2019t seem possible just a month earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Mammoth Mountain probably cashed out the biggest jackpot from the spring reversal, miraculously pulling off <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinertia.com\/mountain\/199-images-mammoths-closing-day\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a June 7 closing date.<\/a> Less than two months later, we can now start talking about California\u2019s ski season kicking right back into gear <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mammothmountain.com\/things-to-do\/events\/opening-day\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">as Mammoth has announced plans for a November 13, 2026 opening day.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>By our count, nobody else has announced a potential opening day in California yet. In fact, no resort in North America has circled its calendar yet, for that matter. Colorado resorts are typically the first in the U.S. to start spinning lifts, with Arapahoe Basin and Keystone Resort the safe money bets year in and year out to be first. Keystone took that honor for the 2025-2026 season, edging out its neighbor just 10 miles away on October 25, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>As for Mammoth, it\u2019s far too early to tell if the Eastern Sierra resort will be able to hit its targeted start. Last season\u2019s opening day was pushed back by a week (more than once) due to snow lines being too high during the region\u2019s first significant storm. And while California\u2019s powder hounds are no doubt already foaming at the mouth with a strengthening El Ni\u00f1o, those weather patterns don\u2019t always translate to cooler fall months and earlier snowfall. Mammoth, specifically, benefits from El Ni\u00f1o conditions most during peak season. The most recent El Ni\u00f1o in 2023-2024 brought just 14 inches of snow in November but that winter finished with a flurry: 133 inches in February, 2024. El Ni\u00f1o tends to shift the subtropical jet stream further south than normal, peaking in January through March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Mammoth Mountain Last winter was all kinds of backwards out West. It didn\u2019t kick off with a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,32176],"class_list":["post-420756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-mammoth-mountain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}